


Been here all along

by Sandel



Category: American Vandal (TV)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Season 2, Yuletide 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 14:03:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17045093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandel/pseuds/Sandel
Summary: A mystery for Sam to solve: why is Peter acting weirdly jealous?





	Been here all along

**Author's Note:**

  * For [middlecyclone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlecyclone/gifts).



> Hi there, middlecyclone!
> 
> Thank you for giving me the opportunity to write for this hilarious canon! I especially liked the way you described the Peter/Sam relationship, so I tried to capture as much of that dynamic as I could in this fic! I hope you enjoy it! : )
> 
> Happy Yuletide!

“Okay,” Peter says, gesturing with the cursor across an empty google document. “Episode one intro: what do we need to get in?”

Sam gives a one-shouldered shrug, sprawled out on the office chair that he has for once appropriated for himself; Peter’s on a regular chair today. It’s weird but nice to be back in the Morning Show studio at Hannover High, after all the time they’ve spent in Bellevue.

“The Brownout?” Sam suggests, stating the obvious just to get a reaction.

Peter makes an irritated little head twitch, and Sam smiles behind his back.

“Well, duh,” Peter says. “But I meant more like, the intro to what we’re doing – the show – not to, like, the case. Which we’re _obviously_ also going to introduce.”

Sam laughs. “Well, what do _you_ think should be in it?” he asks, because he knows Pete already has an idea for how he wants this to go. He always does.

And indeed; Peter clears his throat, and gets going.

“Okay, so first off Ms. DeFontes – you know, that sweet Netflix woman – suggested that we should take some time ‘to explain how Netflix got involved’ –” he begins.

And Sam _was_ gonna let him talk, but he can’t help cutting in with a “– which you correctly took as an order from our corporate overlords.”

Peter makes a funny face, but lets it go.

“So we start off with what we did in season one,” he goes on, “and then the Netflix stuff, and then how this is our senior project, and then we obviously want to get our appearance on The Daily Show in there…”

“Milk that for all it’s worth, yes, good.”

“Other than that,” Peter goes on, “I was thinking we bring up a few of the suggestions we got for what to investigate for season two.”

“Like the idiots that wanted us to solve a murder,” Sam says. He still can’t get over that shit.

“Yeah. Let’s not call them idiots on air, though.”

Sam laughs and boxes Pete on the arm.

“Yeah, let’s not,” he says. _His_ ‘duh’ is silent. “But speaking of idiots, man, are we gonna use this intro thingy of yours to like, catch up with Dylan?”

Peter makes a face again, but this time it’s less funny and more actually irritated.

“Don’t call Dylan an idiot,” he snaps, because sometimes Peter just can’t take a joke, especially when the joke has anything to do with Dylan. “And also, no. Dylan doesn’t need us all up in his business again, messing up his life. If people want to find out how he’s doing, they can just fucking google him.”

And Pete has a point there, but still…

“Are we not even going to go into all that weird shit that happened with him and Ms. Shapiro?” Sam asks, a little incredulous. “Like, the world deserves to know.”

“No, dude, it doesn’t,” Peter deadpans back. “And Shapiro doesn’t deserve the redemption arc either. It’s enough that she’s managed to win over the whole school again with that stupid stunt. We’d be playing right into her hands. Feeding her weird savior complex.”

Sam pulls a considering face. To be honest, Ms. Shapiro has kinda managed to win _him_ back over too, but Pete is still holding a grudge; he even quit Spanish class to get away from her. (“I already know Spanish anyway!” he said.)

“Okay, sure,” Sam says, letting go of a fight he knows he’s gonna lose anyway. “No Dylan, then, just all the fan mail you got begging us to come investigate various dick crimes. And then what?”

Peter shoots Sam a quick, thin smile before looking back at the screen.

“Well,” he says, “then we get to Chloe’s e-mail, and we launch into the mystery right away.”

“Huh,” Sam says, pulling his considering face again. “Well, for that ‘right away’ thing, don’t you think a cold open into St. Bernardine will be more… attention-grabby?” he asks, spinning his chair.

“Uuh, maybe,” Peter responds, typing something that Sam can’t see, because he’s rolled too far away from the computer screen. “Start off with like a mini cliffhanger about the lemonade, or even about The Turd Burglar himself… yeah, that’s good! But we still need to give context for what we’re doing sometime early on in the episode. And then we’ve already decided, right, that we’re gonna do what we did with Dylan in season one, and have the first ep make the case for it being Kevin that did the Brownout…”

“Which he did.”

“Well, yeah. So it’ll be a compelling case.”

Sam nods, and wheels his chair back to the desk.

“Okay,” he says, “so we’re thinking first the Brownout footage – with the extra scenes that Netflix are helping us film, someone needs to e-mail them about that – anyway, then opening credits, then this ‘intro’ you’re talking about to ‘give context,’ which then launches into a, like, fuller explanation of St. Bernardine and Bellevue and Chloe’s amazeballs fucking house…”

Peter types rapid fire as Sam speaks, the two of them really beginning to get into the flow. This must be what DeMarcus feels like when he’s on the court, Sam thinks. He loves it.

* * *

The morning goes on like this, Sam and Peter steadily filling up the google doc until it starts to resemble an actual script, and also taking some things back out because they have to be careful not to give too many clues away too early, now that they actually know the ending from the start. Still, they’re on a roll… until they end up disagreeing about if they should keep that whole initials thing with _T_ anner _B_ asset and _T_ urd _B_ urglar that Sam apparently “went on and on about” during those first days up in Bellevue.

“But Pete, man,” Sam says, taking a deep breath to make his point as well as he can. “If we take that out, my whole Kevin plus Tanner plus maybe Chloe plus also apparently Grayson-theory will make no sense. That was, like, where I first got that idea.”

And Peter shoots Sam an odd look.

“Hey, dude, we agreed to leave out all the unnecessarily inflammatory shit this time,” he says, with a shrug and a fucking _nonchalant_ tone of voice, already back to looking at the screen.

Sam bristles. Because sure, they _have_ agreed on that, because they don’t want a repeat of what happened with Sarah Pearson… or, for that matter, what happened with Alex Trimboli. And things aren’t all that great for Christa either, nowadays. Actually, the last time Sam spoke with her, she told him to go suck a spray-painted dick. So yeah, Sam’s one hundred percent on the ‘no unnecessarily inflammatory bullshit’ train, shit he’s already agreed to his whole investigation into why Kevin’s mother left the family on the proverbial cutting room floor. And Sam’s fine with that, because keeping that in would really be all pain and no gain. But the thing is, Sam was _proud_ of his Horsehead Conspiracy theory. It made sense. As opposed to the documentary, if Pete has his way here.

“Come on, Pete,” Sam says, exasperated. “There’s no way you can cut all of that speculation! I mean, Mrs. Wexler even straight up accuses Chloe, so…”

“Oh, really, Sam? If I remember correctly, by that point you were all swoony over how brave Chloe was for doing that, so I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to get a cut that makes sense.”

“All swoo…! Fuck you, Pete, so were you! And it’s a known thing that perpetrators often try to get involved in the investigation of their own crimes, it happens all the time on TV! And The Turd Burglar wanted attention so it made sense to think they’d _want_ all the Netflix attention, so…”

Sam stops speaking to take a breath, and Peter cuts in.

“Oh my god, Sam, you’ve said all that a million times,” he says, all _reasonable_. “And you were _wrong_ , so I don’t get why we have to have this fight _again_. Chloe has been nothing but great. She’s helpful and clever and fucking brave, _and_ she let us stay in her house. And we’re going to stay with her again when we go back up there! I just don’t get why you’re so keen on biting the hand that feeds us.”

And Sam snaps a little.

“And _I_ just don’t get why we’re gonna cut my best theory just because you have a crush on Chloe Lyman!” he yells, shooting up from his office chair with such speed that it rolls away behind him.

Peter rolls his eyes behind his glasses, but at least he’s turned away from the computer now.

“Oh, so I have a crush on Chloe now?” he asks, still infuriatingly calm. “Like you weren’t the one who was flirting with her all the time, even when you were suspecting her behind her back!”

And finally, there’s the slightest wobble in Peter’s voice as he says the word ‘flirting.’ Sam seizes on it wildly.

“Oh, yeah, that sure doesn’t sound jealous at all, dude!” he says, as cutting as he knows to be.

And Peter’s reaction is… frightening. He’s been calm all through the fight, because the bastard always stays calm when they fight, but now… Now he gets _completely_ still, like a fucking corpse. He just looks at Sam, with two red, angry spots on his cheek that slowly melt into paleness. Then he suddenly gets up from his chair, grabs his bag, and goes over to the door to the studio, where he stops and turns back for a moment.

“I’m working from home today,” he says, utterly monotone. “You can e-mail the Netflix guy about the recreation double casting. Bye.”

And Sam just stands there for a long moment, shocked. What the fuck was that about?

* * *

Sam actually has to get some work done today, so after a while he forces himself to sit back down, opens a blank e-mail to send to the Netflix guy. They e-mail back and forth for a while, discussing casting and clothes and props. The Netflix people are actually great, for all that Sam enjoys calling them their ‘corporate overlords.’ The guy – his name is Dan – talks to Sam like he’s an adult. Which he is, now, obviously, but it’s still novel. They end up having a really fun convo, joking around and in the end even setting some preliminary days for filming that Sam will have to clear with a lot of other people. Peter, for one. Chloe, for another.

Sam obviously should check with Peter first, but he doubts Pete would respond to him right now. He’ll need a day or so to cool off. So instead, Sam texts Chloe the dates, just to have something to do. On a whim, he tacks on a ‘Btw, can I call you later I have smthn to ask you” to the end of the text, and clicks ‘send’ before he can think twice about it.

To Sam’s utter mortification, Chloe immediately calls him back.

 _Shit, shit, shit_ , he thinks. He can feel his heart rate pick up, and he contemplates just letting the phone ring. But no, that’d be weird, Chloe obviously knows he has his phone out. He takes the call.

“Hiya there,” he says, trying to sound casual.

“Hi Sam!” Chloe chirps back. “Sorry for calling you, but these are like the only, like, three minutes I can talk today, so… what was it you wanted to ask me?”

Against his will, Sam finds himself trying to decipher whether Chloe sounds ‘flirty’ or not, and it throws him off even more than he was already thrown off by Chloe calling. Fuck.

“Sam? Are you there?”

“Yeah, yeah, sorry… uh, thing is, I have to, er, talk to Pete first before I can ask you about the thing, so I guess I’ll call you tomorrow?”

Fuck, Sam will have to come up with a really good question before tomorrow, or this is gonna come of really weird.

“Oh, okay!” comes Chloe’s tinny voice. “Well, why don’t you talk to Peter now, and then call me back real quick?”

Fuck again.

“Uuh,” Sam uuhs. “Noo, because the thing is…” The thing is what? Sam tries to think, to come up with some plausible explanation, but instead he blurts, “Pete and I aren’t really talking right now.”

“Oh.”

“We kinda had a fight,” Sam explains, instead of trying to steer this train wreck of a conversation back on track. “About you,” he adds, derailing the conversation further. What is he doing? Why is he saying this?

“About me?” Chloe sounds confused.

“Yeah. Uh. Pete accused me of flirting with you.” _Shut up, shut up, shut up!_

“Oh,” Chloe says again. “Well, that makes sense.”

It does?

“Wheurgh?” Sam sputters. Or something to that effect.

“Well, I…” Now Chloe sounds embarrassed too, which Sam feels guilty about, but also a little relieved. It’s nice to share the awkwardness around. “I mean, you _are_ really cute, Sam, but I don’t want to come between the two of you. And you know, I have my own, uh, things going on anyway…” She sighs. “So, you can tell Peter he doesn’t have to worry.”

Sam is _definitely not_ going to tell Peter that. He’s gonna pray to the god he’s not even sure he believes in that Pete _never_ finds out about this phone call at all.

“Anyway,” Chloe adds, “I _really_ have to go now. Sorry, Sam! Bye!”

“Okay, thanks!” Sam says, nonsensically. “Talk to you later.”

For the second time today, Sam finds himself speechless. What the fuck was _that_ about?

* * *

When Sam shows up to the Morning Show room the next day Peter is already there, so that’s a good sign. When he tells Sam that he has something to show him, Sam naively thinks it’ll be a rough cut of the first episode intro that they’d been planning yesterday. But when Peter clicks play, what instead starts unfolding on the screen is some kind of weird supercut of all the footage where Sam’s supposedly ‘flirting’ with Chloe.

“Pete,” Sam says, one and a half minutes in, watching himself fix his hair while Chloe explains how Kevin introduced her to Tanner. “What the fuck?”

Peter’s face is made of stone when Sam looks at him. He gives a stiff shrug. “The evidence speaks for itself.”

“This is _crazy_ ,” Sam says, unable to keep an incredulous laugh from slipping out. Who the fuck is this obsessed with who their friends may or may not be flirting with? And who the fuck makes a creepy fucking stalker reel about it? “This is… you know what this, is, it’s Gabi all over again!”

Pete still doesn’t move a muscle. “Tell me I’m wrong,” he says.

Sam rolls his eyes and puts his attention back to the screen, where he’s currently cleaning lint off Chloe’s school sweater. It cuts to him, Chloe and Peter at Chloe’s kitchen table. He and Peter are both laughing at something Chloe just said.

”Oh come on,” Sam says, against his better judgment drawn into arguing his case. “If I’m flirting with her there, then so are you!”

”It’s in the way you look at each other,” Peter says sullenly.

“Jesus, dude.” Sam shakes his head. “I was right yesterday, wasn’t I? You _are_ jealous!”

Peter goes pale again, just like he did the day before. Sam definitely hit a nerve there.

”Never mind,” Peter says, looking away. “I was just trying to prove a point.” He clears his throat. “So, anyway, I’ve been thinking: for the introduction to DeMarcus – do you think Ball Insiders will let us use that video about him from their page?”

That has to be the most transparent subject change in the history of subject changes. Sam’s too annoyed to even be amused by ‘Ball Insiders’ (who the fuck chose that name!?).

“Pete...” he says, and he hears himself how whiny he sounds. No one can get under his skin the way Pete does.

Peter ignores him, just barges on with his new train of thought. “I think it’d be perfect, we want his, like, persona first, right? Like with how we present Kevin as the Turd Burglar at first.”

“I... sure,” Sam says, exasperated. “Sure. Whatever, Pete, let’s talk about this instead. I wonder more about how to introduce Lou.”

Pete shoots Sam a quick smile, a little ‘thank you’ for going along with the subject change, and Sam’s irritation melts away.

“Lou’s actually in the Ball Insiders video, doing his hype man schtick.”

“Oh, that’s perfect!”

“Yup!” Pete exclaims, popping his P happily.

Sam sticks his tongue out at him.

* * *

The perfect thing to top of a good day so that it becomes a great day, is a ‘Skype date’ with Gabi. Sam hates having her away at college, and he hates feeling scared that they might drift apart, but whenever she pops up on his screen it’s like she never left.

“Nice hat,” Gabi says by way of greeting.

Sam laughs at Gabi unconsciously echoing Chloe; Sam’s wearing one of his 24 Stop hats.

“Thanks,” he says, striking a pose. “Do you want one? I have five more. And two pink ones, but they don’t have this cool logo.”

Gabi’s pixilated eyebrows rise. “You bought eight hats?”

“And a snow globe,” Sam supplies. “It was for our case, and you know, it’s whatever; we have Netflix money now. I can afford some dumb purchases.”

Gabi shakes her head in loving disbelief. “That’s still _really_ dumb, though, kiddo.”

Sam makes a face at her. “I dunno, as far as addictions developed after suddenly becoming rich and famous, I think splurging on hats is a fairly healthy one.”

“Well, there’s that,” Gabi laughs. “Any _waaay_ , speaking of being rich and famous, how’s the new doc coming along without my ‘down to earth charm,’ or what was it that review said?”

“We miss you every day,” Sam assures her. “Buuuut it’s coming along great! It’s gonna be so much more polished than the last one, and it’s really fun to get to really _build up_ the mystery for the viewers instead of just, you know, bringing them along in real time as we stumble from theory to theory like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern or something…”

Gabi loves a theater reference.

“Yeah, that’s pretty cool,” she says, “but aren’t you guys worried people are gonna, like, look up court documents or whatever?” As Gabi speaks, the video starts to lag, and then the frame freezes – on a really goofy Gabi face, too – and the audio starts lagging too, and all Sam can hear is. “Or […] with the […]? And […] theories?”

When the video catches up, Gabi’s looking expectantly at Sam, like she’s waiting for an answer.

“Sorry, I kinda lost you there,” Sam says with an apologetic shrug. “Look, I still don’t get why you won’t just switch to Discord, it’s _so_ much better!”

Gabi rolls her eyes. “Whatever, I will, I will, stop nagging me! Anyway, I was asking about, like, the balance between cutting things and still keeping enough so the, like, solution isn’t obvious from the start.”

“Yeah, I got you,” Sam says. This _is_ something he and Peter have thought a lot about. “Well, it’s mostly about keeping the things that brought the investigation, like, forward even when it wasn’t right… but, yeah, it’s a struggle, a bit. Like, we had a really weird fight about it yesterday. And a bit today, I guess…”

“You’re fighting _again_?” Gabi asks, incredulous. “What’s with you guys and these documentaries? You _never_ fight when you’re not making them…”

That’s not _exactly_ true, but Sam’s not gonna argue about that.

“You know how Peter is,” he says instead, because Gabi definitely does know that. “Like, he put together this whole crazy video of times he thought I was flirting with this girl we stayed with.”

“He _what_!?”

Gabi’s outrage reawakens some of Sam’s own anger, which he’d mostly forgotten about when he and Pete got into the flow again earlier today.

“Yeah, I know!” he says. “Like, dude, what the fuck. But I think he’s just being weird about Chloe because he has a crush on her and is, like, jealous or something.”

Gabi goes weirdly still as Sam speaks, and it’s hard to tell through the grainy video, but Sam thinks she looks… thoughtful? And when she starts speaking, she sounds very hesitant.

“I… I’m sorry Sam, I don’t wanna overstep,” she says, visibly cringing, her nose crunching up. “I mean, you’re probably right, but, well… Don’t you think Pete maybe ha–”

And right then the call breaks.

Damn it, what the fuck was that about? Sam calls Gabi back up, but when he asks her what it was she was going to say, she hedges.

“You know, I just thought, that… well, you see…” she mumbles, and then shakes herself and changes tune completely. “Actually, never mind! Let me tell you about this really cute guy I met at a frat party. He’s the frat president!”

Sam rolls his eyes as big as he can for the camera, and settles in.

* * *

In the days that follow, Peter’s Chloe-weirdness slips from Sam’s mind. That is, until he checks Facebook one morning a little more than a week later, and the first thing he sees is an status update that tells him that ‘ **Chloe Lyman** is in a relationship with **Tanner Basset** ’.

Sam’s first thought is just _oh, so they actually got together and made it official_. He’s not really surprised. He always thought Chloe was a bit too cool for Tanner (or for Kevin, for that matter!), but she always seemed to really like him, even when she took Kevin’s side against him, so it makes sense that they’d start dating now that everything is fine between the three of them. And while on the subject of Kevin, Sam’s second thought is, _I wonder how Kevin is taking this_. And it isn’t until _then_ that he thinks _wait, and what about Peter?_

Sam and Peter have physics together for their first class that morning, and Sam spends half the lesson trying to judge whether Peter seems unusually down about anything, but it’s hard to tell. Pete isn’t the most expressive of people even on a good day, and he tends to concentrate in class. As opposed to Sam, today. _He_ doesn’t snap out of his investigation into Pete’s state of mind until Mr. Maeda literally snaps him out of it by snapping his fingers in his face. Then he tries to concentrate on understanding the Lorentz force.

Sam waits until lunch break to take his investigation further. Then, as he, Peter and Ming are walking to Pizza Hut, he tentatively brings up the Chloe-plus-Tanner news up. Ming, who’d come along to Bellevue for some of the time to help film, and therefore knows Chloe and Tanner a little bit, is all about it.

“Nice!” he exclaims, punching the air in his charming, goofy Ming fashion.

Peter, for his part, doesn’t really react at all.

“So, uh, Peter… what do you think?” Sam asks, bracing for… well, for _something_.

But Peter just shrugs. “I dunno, good for them I guess,” he says. It sounds genuine enough.

“Are you surprised?”

“No, not really? Anyway, guys, I’ve been thinking. Do we _really_ need to keep that scene where I dig through poop with chopsticks?”

“YES!” Sam and Ming chorus.

After Sam gets drawn into a documentary-making discussion, it isn’t until his drive home that afternoon that he realizes that, wait… if Peter wasn’t jealous about Chloe getting with Tanner, then why had he been acting so jealous about Sam and Chloe supposedly flirting? And then, half-way home, alone in his car, blasting Kendrick Lamar, Sam has his eureka moment; suddenly he can hear Gabi’s voice in his head, and instead of being cut short by a Skype call breaking up, she’s saying ‘Don’t you think Pete maybe has a crush on _you_?’

_Oh, shit._

* * *

The rest of the week pass in a blur for Sam, and soon Mr. Maeda isn’t the only teacher who’s getting annoyed with his lack of attention. Sam knows he has to get his head back in the game and focus on school, but he really _doesn’t_ know what to do with this new suspicion of his. And if concentrating in class has become difficult, working on the documentary is nearly _impossible_. Whenever he and Peter are alone together, Sam finds himself analyzing every little thing Peter does, looking for signs that he’s right – or that he’s wrong, for that matter – but he’s not making any progress whatsoever to a clear answer.

Peter is just Peter. As always, he’s intense, often unconsciously domineering, and more than a little patronizing from time to time, which doesn’t seem like typical crushée behavior, but then again, Sam has never really seen Peter in love. (Unless he has, for ages, and never realized. Fuck, this is confusing.) And on the other hand, Peter is just as ready to banter and play pranks, just as full of appreciation for Sam’s better ideas, and has just as many moments of surprising sweetness as he always is and has. And sure, maybe Peter is more like that with Sam than he is with other people, but that could just be because they’re best buds, and because Pete’s pretty shy when he doesn’t have the backup of a camera and a case.

So, Sam is getting nowhere with trying to spot signs in the here and now, so instead he thinks back into past interactions for proof. Like, Peter being in love with him would definitely explain a lot about Pete’s weirdness about Gabi, like how weird he got about that recording of Sam telling Gabi that she was more important to him than anyone. But if Sam’s gonna count Pete’s weirdness about Gabi back in 2016 as proof of him having a thing for Sam, that means that he’s, well, ‘had a thing for Sam’ for at least almost two years. Shit, that’s heavy stuff.

And the thing is, _if_ Sam’s suspicion is right, what the hell is he supposed to do with it? What’s proper protocol for one of your best friends being in love with you? (He supposes he could ask Gabi, but, well, he’d rather die, so that’s a no.) If he’d been the one in love with Pete, and Pete had figured it out, how would he have wanted him to handle it? And as if these conundrums weren’t difficult enough, there’s actually an even more pressing question on Sam’s mind: how does _he_ really feel about _Pete_?

Sam thinks back to how not-actually grossed out he’d been when Peter had topped off their Bellevue prank war by spitting water right in his face. That is, it had been, like, objectively gross, but it had also been fine – it was just Peter, after all. What’s a little water-mixed-with-saliva between friends? But then Sam makes himself a little thought experiment: what if it had been Ming who had spit water all over him? Okay, first of all, Ming would never do something like that, and second of all… okay, yes, that would have been disgusting. Sam cringes a little just thinking about it. So that’s interesting.

It’s not like Sam hasn’t considered before that he might not be straight. He’s a post millennial – gen Z or whatever it’s called – and he’s a theatre kid, so the thought has come up. He knows not to take anybody’s sexuality for granted, even his own. Sure, he likes girls, but he could be bi! He hasn’t ever really liked a boy before, but there are lots of girls he doesn’t like either, so maybe he just hasn’t found the right guy yet. He’s definitely never been grossed out by the idea of two dudes together the way some guys are. And, like, some guys are legitimately hot. If, say, DeMarcus was offering, Sam’s not sure he’d say no. But Peter? Sam doesn’t know. He needs more time to think.

* * *

In the end, more time to think is exactly what Sam _doesn’t_ get. It’s Saturday morning, and Peter’s over at Sam’s house to run through the script for some of the recreation scenes, and Sam’s boring his eyes into Pete’s neck, trying to see through his thick hair and his skull to read his thoughts.

“Okay, so what about a close up on Mrs. Wexler’s hand creepily patting Kevin’s back?” Pete asks, fingers flying across his laptop keyboard.

When Sam doesn’t reply, Pete turns away from the screen to find him staring at him.

“Er, what?” Sam says, tearing his eyes away from Peter’s cheekbones. Fuck, he needs to get himself together.

Peter takes a deep breath.

“Okay, you’re being super weird, and you’ve been super weird for _days_ , and it’s freaking me out,” he says, his fingers drumming nervously on Sam’s desk. “What’s up?”

Okay. Sam takes a deep breath of his own, because he’s just gonna come out and say it; he’s gonna come up with the perfect way to tactfully ask Peter about his feelings for him, and they’re gonna talk it out like the adults they now are. Sam opens his mouth… and what come out is “Hey Pete, are you gay?”

_What._

That seems to be Peter’s first reaction as well. For a moment he just stares at Sam, dumbstruck, his mouth frozen in a ridiculous little ‘o’ shape. And Sam, to add insult to injury, starts laughing this nervous, stupid, mortifying laughter. It just bubbles out of him, and he still can’t stop staring at Peter, and to his horror Sam sees tears forming behind Pete’s glasses, before Peter turns back to the computer, his back against Sam.

 _Fuck, fuck, fuck_. Sam needs to stop laughing _right now_ , and with a Herculean effort, he does. He watches Peter take off his glasses, and roughly rub at his eyes but he still has his back turned towards Sam so Sam can’t see his face.

When Sam trusts himself to speak again, he says, “I’m so sorry, Pete, Jesus, I didn’t mean to, like, put you on the spot like that, you don’t have to answer that, of course you don’t! Please, just forget I even asked, I don’t know what got into me.” His voice wobbles as he speaks, and when he’s done he has to swallow three times – and he’s not sure if it’s to keep from laughing again, or if it’s to keep from crying.

Peter doesn’t respond at all at first, he just sits there with his rod-straight back still turned towards Sam. Then he slowly turns around again, and he has this really tense smile on his lips and his eyes are pretty red, but he says it’s chill, it’s fine, no hard feelings, and then he just grabs his laptop, shutting it as he picks it up.

“I think I’m gonna go,” he says, voice robotic through his creepy Stepford smile.

Sam rises to his feet as well, and now he’s looking down Peter’s dark eyes, eyelashes clumped together by un-fallen tears. His eyes are really beautiful, Sam notices, even when he’s on the verge of crying.

“Don’t,” Sam says, instinctively reaching out for Peter’s wrist and then stopping his hand halfway, so it dangles awkwardly in midair. “Please, Pete, you know that it’s fine if you’re gay, right? I don’t care! I know I’m acting really weird, but I really don’t care!” There’s a hysterical note to his voice that Sam can’t control.

“Sure,” Peter says, but he’s still shut off, still clearly ready to run off any second.

From nowhere, a mortifying memory pops into Sam’s head, and he immediately feels like he has to apologize for that too.

“And you know that dick thing,” he adds, still in that manic tone of voice. “Like, my ‘theory’ in the original Vandal about how you drew the dicks because you love dick or whatever – that wasn’t about you being gay! You know that too, right?”

Something seems to shift in Peter then. He looks Sam in the eye for real, now, and a little of the tension is draining from his cheeks, his shoulders. And then he sighs, like, _really_ deeply. “Yeah, I know. And it’s fine Sam, really. It’s fine. But will you _please_ let me go? Or can we at least talk about something else? _Anything_ else?”

And Sam really doesn’t feel like they’re done with this talk, but he doesn’t want to force Peter to have it either.

“I’ll change the subject if you give me a hug,” he blurts, and maybe that’s not a fair thing to ask – demand! – right now, but he can’t stand the thought of Peter looking wrecked like that and him not getting to touch him.

Peter looks panicked for a second, but then he gives in. He puts his laptop back down on the desk, and then he takes a step forward and spreads his arms. He doesn’t exactly look super enthusiastic, but Sam will take it. He wraps his arms around his best friend, and feels himself relax almost immediately.

The two of them don’t usually hug – at least not like this. Quick hugs hello or good-bye are more their general style. But now, Peter is warm and solid and surprisingly small in Sam’s arms, and he smells _really good_. How has Sam never noticed this before? Sweet but fresh, a little musky, a little salty, except you can’t smell salt, can you? Well, you can definitely taste it, and Sam has the absurd urge to lick Peter’s skin. Instead he unconsciously presses Pete closer, buries his nose a little in his neck. He only notices what he’s doing when Pete stiffens in his arms.

“Dude,” Peter says weakly. He sounds a little out of breath. “Dude, what are you doing?”

Sam lets him go, extremely self-conscious. Does he always have so much limbs? Is his breathing always this loud? Sam closes his eyes, trying to regain some semblance of control over himself, over the situation. When he opens them again, Peter is looking up at him with his beautiful eyes, a little crease between his thick eyebrows. There’s a softness in Peter’s face that makes Sam decide to just go for it.

Very, very slowly – he wants to give Pete a chance to stop this in case he’s read the signs wrong – Sam lifts his hand to Peter’s face. The backs of his fingers stroke up Peter’s cheek, before he grabs for his glasses. As he takes them off, Peter shuts his eyes and incrementally tilts his face up. This close, Sam can see the tiny little blue blood vessels across Pete’s eyelids. He leans down, shutting his own eyes as well, and then his mouth is on Peter’s full lips.

 _Jesus_ , this is really happening. Pete’s mouth opens against Sam’s in a slow, soft caress of a kiss, no tongue, just tasting each other out for the first time. Peter’s hands are grabbing at Sam’s shirt, at his waist. Sam is still holding Pete’s glasses. When he notices he can’t help smiling against Peter's mouth, and a moment later they break apart.

“You see,” Sam says, out of breath but unable to resist going for the joke, “the reason I asked is that I think _I_ might be bi.”

Pete rolls his lovely eyes. “You idiot,” he mumbles, full of shocked adoration.

This time, they kiss with tongue.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this story is from Swift's _You Belong With Me_. Thanks to my beta for looking this over!
> 
> And thanks for reading!


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